Walnut Shortbread Cookies

I didn't take any photos of yesterday's lunch, un gratin de côtes de blettes — pre-cooked Swiss chard ribs baked in a cheesy cream sauce — but it came out really nice. I sprinkled grated Cantal and Mimolette cheeses over the top before browning the dish in the oven. I also mixed some cooked lardons fumés in with the chard ribs to make it into a full meal. In France, people often cook the fleshy white ribs of the chard leaves separately from the green part of the leaves, which is prepared and served like spinach.

I did snap a photo of the cookies we made yesterday afternoon. The recipe came out of a book called Miette that an American friend passed on  to us. Miette is a bakery in San Francisco. The Walnut Shortbread Cookies recipe is one that I plan to save before I pass the book on to another friend who likes to bake.

The Walnut Shortbread Cookies are very rich. The same friend who passed along the cookbook also has given us tons of walnuts over the past few years. She and her husband have a big walnut tree on their property down the road from us and it has been producing nuts like crazy.

The cookies are rich because they are made with a ton of butter — 225 grams of it, which is about half a pound. Otherwise, it's just flour (1½ cups), sugar (¾ cup), one egg yolk and half a cup of walnuts that you toast and then reduce to a powder, either in a food processor or, as I did, in a mortar and pestle. If you want the full recipe, let me know in a comment and I'll post it.

P.S. Here is the recipe

Walnut Shortbread Cookies

½ cup walnut pieces
1½ cups flour
½ tsp. salt
225 g butter, cold and cubed
¾ cup sugar
1 egg yolk
sea salt

(Note: A U.S. cup is 8 fluid ounces.)

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

Toast the walnuts and then let them cool. Grind them finely in a food processor or mortar and pestle. Sift together the flour and salt and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle, beat together the sugar and the butter for 4 minutes. Add the egg yolk and mix until completely blended. Add the dry ingredients and walnut powder and mix just to combine.

If the dough is soft, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 30 minutes. Then roll it out ½” thick and square the edges of the dough. With a sharp knife or a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 1” squares. Place them 2 inches apart on parchment paper on a baking pan. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt.

Bake until cookies are firm, about 10 - 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.